A Series of Bungee Cords: Part Six
By Lily Landers
It was Wednesday afternoon and the nurses and visitors were gone for the day. Dad had enjoyed his last sponge bath and massage. He’d said, “Ciao!” to a handful of his closest friends, kissed them on their foreheads and called them each by name. And now he was quiet, his eyes closed. Fiona and I sat on the bed with him and sang songs from our childhood. We sang “The Circle Game” first to try and get most of the sobbing out of the way. I remembered Dad playing that song over and over again years ago in our living room on Drexel when his dad was having open heart surgery and he felt helpless the way one does when there’s nothing to do but wait and pray. We sang our parts to “In My Room,” a family favorite that Mom, Dad, Fiona and I sang in harmony many times driving back and forth on our valley commute. We sang “Return to Pooh Corner” and the Woody Guthrie songs that Dad used to sing to us when we were kids, sitting at the foot of our beds with his guitar. Later he sang those same songs to kids he visited in hospitals as a Musician On Call in New York City. Fiona and I sang and cried, sobbing through whole verses. Dad’s eyes were closed but when we sang they fluttered under his lids. In my hospice training they told us the hearing is the last sense to go. I know he heard us. We were loud. We were maybe too loud.
It was the most beautiful sunset ever and we opened all the doors and windows to let it in. My husband Kevin came home from work and sat at the foot of Dad’s bed rubbing his feet while we held Dad’s hands and sang. Maxine the cat and Peanut the dog wanted to snuggle on the bed too. They had both been all over Dad during his stay, always wanting to curl up next to him. When we moved her, Maxine came back and curled up on the wheelchair next to the bed so she could be close to him. We sang and cried and told Dad we loved him for the rest of the night. We gave him his dose at midnight and decided we wouldn’t set an alarm for his next scheduled dose at 4:00 am.
I had a feeling I would wake up anyway. And I did. I was sleeping when Kev got up out of bed and walked into the bathroom. I shot up in bed because I thought I was still downstairs on the bed with my dad and that he was getting up. I realized I was upstairs and looked at my phone. It was 4:02. I ran downstairs to check on Dad. For the first time I didn’t knock, I just went in. He had just passed. He was still warm. His eyes and mouth were open. I put my hand on his chest. It was still. His body felt hard but not cold. I waited, just staring at him, not sure if he would gasp for another breath. Our bedroom is right above his bedroom and I wondered if we felt his soul leaving his body, ascending. I went back upstairs to get Kev. “I think he’s gone,” I said. Kevin came downstairs and checked his pulse to confirm that he had passed. I went to the back bedroom and woke Fiona. After a brief moment with his body, we started making phone calls. I knew what I was supposed to do: call the hospice hotline so they can send a nurse over, call Uncle Billy so he can come over and say his last goodbye, call the important women. I called Dad’s girlfriend and Fiona called our mom. They were both in New York so it would be 7:15 am for them. The hospice nurse arrived and closed Dad’s eyes. She filled out the paperwork. She asked me for the time of death. She said the people from the funeral home would be here at 7:00. Kevin asked her to tell the people from the funeral home that we have a lot of stairs. Uncle Billy came and had a final moment with Dad. I took off Dad’s socks because they were Mom’s and I knew she would want them. They were the only socks that would fit over his swollen ankles because the elastic was all stretched out. Mom loves stretched out socks.
We all walked out of Dad’s room and sat down at the dining room table. The hospice nurse left. Billy started telling a story and I kept looking out the window. The beginnings of the sunrise were happening outside. I was listening to my uncle but I was watching night fade away and the sky become light. I walked to the hall closet and got jackets for myself and my sister. We went outside together to watch the sun come up. It was so still. It was so beautiful. We talked about how Dad’s body was in that room but Dad wasn’t in there anymore. How the feeling of missing him was already lodged in our organs and bones. And then a breeze came out of nowhere and hit us in the face. We turned to each other wide-eyed because we both felt him on that breeze. It was as if he said, “No, I’m not in that room anymore. Now I am everywhere.”
When the funeral home van pulled up, we waved to them from the front porch. We moved the outdoor table out of the way so they could carry him straight out the front bedroom doors and down the stairs. I signed the papers and two men wrapped him in a white sheet and lifted him up. There would be an extra charge because we have so many stairs. We watched them carry him down, his bare feet sticking out. His feet looked great. He always had nice feet. The guys clunked his head on the bottom gate but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t in there anymore.
We made more phone calls and ate the food our friends had been bringing all week. We plopped down on the couches, emotionally and physically exhausted, and talked about what to do next. Dad must have liked our ideas because he flickered the lights twice. A Los Angeles Memorial at the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax. In New York: an honorary bench in Central Park, a coach’s plaque at RBI: Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, a pint for him at Mc Sorley’s on St. Patrick’s Day. We booked our flights that afternoon. This whole year we have honored him through stories, songs, memorials and rituals. And 2015 continues to be the year of Dad.
Click on this link to hear “In My Room” performed by Matt, Murphy, Lily and Fiona.
